Page 106 of Shifters Reckoning

“The corruption remembers,” Dr. Wise said. “It has worn other men before this one. The sorcerer your ancestor crossed all those centuries ago, the witch’s drowned boy, I believe that was its suit before this one. Perhaps one of many. Every story shifters tell about Acheron is partially true. The grudge survived the changing of the man the way a blade survives the changing of its sheath. What died was only ever the suit, Alpha. What hates you is the soul inside it, and that is older than the clans.”

“But what of the man?” Emma asked. “Isn’t he in there?”

“There is a remnant,” Dr. Wise said. “Buried deep, drowned but not dead, the way your birth mother is buried in the woman in our infirmary. The corruption is armor, Emma. It is almost two centuries thick, and it has no crack in it anywhere.” She paused. “Except the man underneath. The grief never fully healed because grief like that doesn’t. That’s the flaw in him. Not his power. His loss. The one door in the whole fortress that was never his to lock. A grief-stricken anchor didn’t build it. The corruption did, on top of him, and it can’t reach all the way down to weld it shut. That’s how he is who he was in the 1840s, but he’s also the ancient wizard.”

Sophia squeezed my shoulder, once, and I realized my free hand had closed into a fist on my knee.

The last anchor lost his multimorph, let the rot in, and became the monster that was going to try to kill mine, and the only crack in that monster was the grieving man he used to be.

“So that’s the fight. That’s our goal,” Emma said, very quietly, staring at the page. “Not kill the mage. Reach the man.”

“This is why he’s invoked the death-duel. This is the reckoning,” Dr. Wise said. “The one the histories couldn’t record. Every emergence ends here at this exact crossroads, and every one of them chose destruction, probably because destruction is simpler.” She closed the box. “Mend or end. Now you know what the mending is actually for.”

I studied my mate, weeks from a dome she’d have to build with her own magic, carrying a price she meant to rewrite, staring down a monster that was just a grieving anchor wearing armor.

Then I considered the hole that would open in me if I lost her, and the rot that would come looking for an opening, and how I was, right now, tonight, exactly one dead multimorph away from being the next Acheron. Fuck, no, not me. Not ever. I’d cross the dome that lets no one cross. I would be the anchor that held through the loss that broke the last one. Whatever it cost.

“You’ve never been in danger of becoming Acheron…” I whispered low enough for Emma’s ears only. “It’s always been me.”

Her head whipped toward me. “I won’t let that happen.”

“I believe you,” I murmured. “To save tomorrow’s world, you have to survive. You must save me from your death.” And I’ll die before I let myself become Acheron.

Emma’s eyes widened as though she heard the last. Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out.

“Eat,” Sophia interjected. She placed a fork in my hand like a woman handing a shield to a soldier. “Both of you. We work with what we have, and tonight, God help us, what we have is a casserole, a librarian, and the two most stubborn people in Louisiana.” Her voice wavered. “I’ve buried a husband. I am not burying a daughter, so eat and then figure out how to save everyone so everybody can come home.” She winked at me. “I would still like grandchildren someday.”

Emma tried to laugh, but her chin quivered. I’ll meet him beneath the Cold Moon under a flag of truce. That’s the way it has to be.

I offered Sophia a smile I hoped didn’t look like a grimace. Then we ate. I shoveled food into my mouth without tasting it.

For the first time since the Void, the whispers went quiet. I finally had something bigger than fear to grasp.

I had to be an anchor for her. Nobody living, dead, or rotted through the middle was going to keep me from saving Emma Carter.

CHAPTER THIRTY

emma

Six-Mile Manor

Midnight

“I’m going to get a drink,” Logan growled. “Want anything?”

“Surprise me.”

He left our bedroom without another word.

The casserole dish sat empty in the kitchen sink, and the water-damaged box sat closed on Logan’s desk. Dr. Wise and my mother had finally gone off to their own tasks, arguing amiably about filing systems. The manor had gone quiet around the single worst piece of good news anyone had ever handed us.

Acheron was a grieving anchor with a monster inside him. The only crack in the fortress was the man underneath. Mend or end. Weeks from now, I was going to walk into a dome and find out which option he would choose.

I should have been studying. I could have poured myself into an all-nighter like I used to do in college, a hundred forms to drill and a price to keep trying to outthink. Instead, I stood in the middle of the bedroom I shared with Logan and decided that I didn’t want to spend one more hour being the multimorph.

I’d been the multimorph for months without a break, at a conclave, at a beheading, at every significant event in the previous weeks. I’d been offered a crown, and I’d been the multimorph walking back into a camp that had bowed instead of laughed. Exhaustion barely summed it all up.

Tonight, I wanted to be Emma. Just Emma. Sophia’s smart-mouthed kid, the rainbow vet from Willow Creek. I was a woman with weeks left, and a man in the next room fixing a drink like our world wasn’t about to end.